Consumer lending startup EzCred raises more than $1M funding

EzCred has a unique model of offering digital loans at offline sales point, in contrast to several other online lending startups which offer credit only through a digital platform.ET Bureau | Updated: May 19, 2017, 09:56 IST

"We had set out to raise $1 million and ended up raising a little more than $1 million," co-founder Maheshwari told ET. "We decided not to go down the institutional round and ended having a very prominent group of investors from the financial and technology industries."Consumer lending startup EzCred, founded by former Zephyr Peacock India managing director Sachin Maheshwari and Zipdial co-founder Amiya Pathak, has raised more than $1 million (about Rs 6.5 crore) from a clutch of angel investors in its first round of funding.

The investors include Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of Nasdaq-listed Nutanix; Rajesh Yohannan, former head of global mobile banking at Citibank; and Akash Garg, director of engineering at cab aggregator Uber.

“We had set out to raise $1 million and ended up raising a little more than $1 million,” co-founder Maheshwari told ET. “We decided not to go down the institutional round and ended having a very prominent group of investors from the financial and technology industries.”

The other investors in the round included Sanjay Nambiar, head of Asia-Pacific for strategy, cards and personal loans at Citibank; Christian Oestlien, director of product management at YouTube; Ratikant Sahu, head of digital delivery at ANZ; and Neill Occhiogrosso, partner at US-based Costanoa Ventures.

EzCred has a unique model of offering digital loans at offline points of sale, in contrast to several other online lendingstartups which offer credit or loans only through a digital platform.

The Bengaluru-based startup has partnered YMS Mobitech, which will help it reach more than 10,000 offline retailers across 300 cities. The company, which is set to go live with its product soon, aims to target small business owners, lower income groups and students, and has tied up with a few banks and nonbanking financial companies.

“Most of the investment will go towards technology development. We are building a technology platform to enable paperless origination of loans. Further, we are also developing new age credit and fraud models using alternate data sources,” Maheshwari said. The company will look to raise Series A funds in the next six to 12 months, Maheshwari said.

“I am excited to be part of EzCred’s journey to enable credit for the masses. I see a strong team with a unique combination of both financial pedigree and technical capability, and a laser-sharp focus to fundamentally transform how consumers access credit in India,” Pandey said in a statement.